RBMS 2012 Preconference Call for Short Papers

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: December 15, 2011

FUTURES!

53rd Annual RBMS Preconference
San Diego, California
June 19 - 22, 2012

Planning for the 2012 RBMS Preconference is entering the final stages. This year's theme is FUTURES! The 2012 RBMS Preconference will explore a multiplicity of futures for the rare book, manuscript, and special collections community. How are special collections materials being discovered and used today? How will they be discovered and used tomorrow? Who will our users be, and what will they need? What forms will special collections materials take? Join us to learn, discuss, share, and contemplate. Now is the time to shape and prepare, because the future is now.

The Preconference will feature engaging plenaries, educational seminars, lively discussion groups, and dynamic short paper presentations. Plenary sessions will address three facets of our theme:

Use: Digital Humanities

Discovery: Linked Open Data

Object: Book

Clearly there are many, many more aspects of this theme to explore, so we invite short paper submissions that address our theme in creative and thought-provoking ways. Short papers can be broadly theoretical or solidly practical; they can be the result of intense personal research or the fruit of a productive collaboration.

A subcommittee of the 2012 RBMS Preconference Program Planning Committee will review all submissions and select and organize the papers into intellectually coherent clusters of three or four 15 to 20 minute presentations. There will be one time slot during which four short paper sessions will run concurrently.

Proposals of 500 words or less should be sent to Mike Kelly (mkelly@amherst.edu) no later than December 15, 2011. Final selections by the Short Papers Subcommittee will be announced early in the New Year.

Short Papers Subcommittee:

Mike Kelly, Amherst College

Melissa Nykanen, Pepperdine University

Katie L.B. Henningsen, University of Kentucky

Karla Nielsen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

A Note on Preconference Program Planning: The process of Preconference Programming is not always clear to newcomers to the section, and even some who have been around for a while. The Preconference Program Planning Committee is responsible for the overall theme and schedule of the conference, including selecting plenary speakers and organizing discussion sessions. Their work began at the 2011 Midwinter meeting in San Diego. The Seminars Committee is responsible for development of seminars that may, or may not, be directly tied to the Preconference theme. The 2012 Preconference will feature ten seminars, some of which have been in development for over a year. Short papers are a way to open the Preconference to participation from a wider range of voices than may be represented in the other sessions on a shorter timeline. Those interested in helping to shape the 2013 Preconference, should attend the first meeting of the 2013 Preconference Program Planning Committee during ALA Midwinter in Dallas.